got its long trunk because it was so slow and clumsy that it couldn’t fend off a crocodile, which bit the docile animal and stretched its nose into the now trademark trunk.
In the Congo, legends have persisted for centuries that witchcraft can turn people into animals, and even today many villagers will blame their neighbours when elephants run amok and raid crops or kill people, saying that it was down to voodoo or magic, which is often a convenient way to bad-mouth an enemy or have an excuse to plunder a nearby village.
Whether good or bad though, elephants have featured heavily in cultural symbolism, art and storytelling around the world since ancient times. I remember being rather surprised when walking across the Sahara Desert in Sudan to discover prehistoric etchings on a rocky outcrop depicting all sorts of animals, including elephants. They date back thousands of years to a time when North Africa was a lush, green savannah, like much of the rest of Africa. In the Tadrart mountains, on the border of Libya and Algeria, lies some of the best-preserved rock art in Africa, including a remarkably well-proportioned picture of an elephant that’s 12,000 years old.
North African elephants have been extinct for 1,500 years, but their legacy lives on in Mediterranean culture. The Biblical behemoth that features in the Book of Job is described as a fantastical monster, which sounds suspiciously like a pachyderm:
Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox.
Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly.
He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together.
His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron.
He is the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can make his sword to approach unto him.
Surely the mountains bring him forth food, where all the beasts of the field play.
He lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, and fens.
The shady trees cover him with their shadow; the willows of the brook compass him about.
Behold, he drinketh up a river, and hasteth not: he trusteth that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth.
He taketh it with his eyes: his nose pierceth through snares.
In Ancient Egypt, elephants were prized as both war machines and status symbols, dead and alive. Elephants featured in hieroglyphics as a testament to a time when their range was on a global scale.
In Ancient Greece, too, the elephant found its way into popular culture after Alexander the Great encountered war elephants on his travels to India, and subsequently incorporated them into his own army. When the ancient sailors dug up the skulls of prehistoric dwarf elephants on the island of Cyprus, it’s easy to forgive them for thinking that they must have belonged to the remains of the mythical one-eyed Cyclops.
Then, of course, Ancient Rome had its own encounters with the beasts when the North African leader Hannibal brought an army of war elephants halfway across Europe, and famously over the Alps, to invade Italy. At least one elephant was used in Caesar’s invasion of Ancient Britain, ‘which was equipped with armour and carried archers and slingers in its tower. When this unknown creature entered the river, the Britons and their horses fled and the Roman army crossed over.’
Over the centuries, elephants have variously been revered, feared and worshipped – their image being used to symbolise all that is great and powerful.
In 1255, the King of France gave an elephant to the English monarch King Henry III as a unique gift. It was kept in the gardens of the Tower of London, and medieval Londoners flocked to see the mysterious beast. While confined to the lawns of the metropolitan fortress, it was said that the elephant was fed prime cuts of beef and rather enjoyed a bucket of red wine. It’s no wonder he is reputed to have died from obesity. Nowadays the tower hosts a sculpture of the poor creature, peering down from its haunted walls.
Napoleon commissioned an artist to design an elephant monument to be built outside the Bastille. It was meant to be an enormous bronze sculpture demonstrating the emperor’s power in Africa, but it never got past the plaster-cast model stage, which ended up being abandoned, and the project eventually came to symbolise futility and folly in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.
Many African nations, including South Africa, use elephant tusks in their coats of arms to represent wisdom, strength, moderation and eternity. The elephant is symbolically important to the nation of Ivory Coast, whose heraldry features an elephant head as its focal point, and in the western African Kingdom of Dahomey (now part of Benin), the elephant was associated with the nineteenth-century rulers of the Fon people, whose flag depicted an elephant wearing a royal crown.
In Denmark, there is a chivalric order called ‘Order of the Elephant’, which is the country’s highest honour, usually bestowed only upon monarchs and heads of state. Indeed, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is herself a ‘Knight of the Elephant’.
Even across the pond, the elephant is still visible in everyday politics, having become the symbol of the Republican Party – a throwback to Aesop’s Fables and the story of the Rat and the Elephant.
Elephants feature in our thoughts and our language. If someone says, ‘Think of a big grey animal,’ you are most likely to think of an elephant, rather than a hippo or rhino, wolf, tapir, gorilla or seal. Elephants have become their own idioms: a ‘white elephant’ being a burdensome thing that’s difficult to get rid of; whilst an ‘elephant in the room’ is the inconvenient truth that nobody wants to speak about.
Elephants have been written about, painted, mocked and allegorised for millennia. Elephants have featured alternately as a symbol of natural might, of fearsome magnitude, peaceful coexistence and utilitarian commercialism.
They have been background extras and leading characters in books for over 2,000 years. Elephants represent nature at its biggest: they symbolise wilderness but also danger, fear as well as courage; they personify war and peace; brute force and the height of intellect. Children love elephants, and adults love them too, because elephants, for as long as we can remember, represent us.
Over 100 million years have passed since the common ancestor of humans and elephants – a small, shrew-like animal – walked the earth. We diverged at a time when dinosaurs still ruled the world, yet we maintain a fascination with elephants that is hard to define, our fates seemingly intertwined throughout history.
From their huge size and strange appearance to their extraordinary senses and incredible brains, it appears that everything about them is unusual, extreme, or unique, and yet in so many ways they are more like us than we would care to admit. They are without a doubt one of the most remarkable and fascinating creatures on earth.
Ancestors and Evolution
Looking at their body size, where they live, and the kind of environments that they live in, it would be easy to assume that the closest living relatives to elephants would be other megaherbivores, such as rhinos and hippos. But in fact, genetic analysis has revealed that the closest living relative of the elephant is the rock hyrax – a furry, rodent-like creature that looks a bit like a guinea pig and isn’t much bigger.
Elephants, along with hyrax, and, believe it or not, the aquatic manatees and dugongs, belong to the branch of mammals known
